From the very beginning of Comus, the possibility that sound on Earth may not be communicated directly or faithfully from its source is raised. The problem lies with the medium of sound—the air. In the first lines of the masque, the Attendant Spirit complains about bad air quality, contrasting the “Regions milde of calm and serene Ayr” where he originated from with Earth’s “smoak and stirr” (4-5). His “bright aëreal” nature is
indisposed to “the rank vapours of this Sin-worn mould”—the fumes that course through the mortal body and the material world—but he suffers them in order to lend his special
aid to a just few on Earth (3, 17). The Lady echoes these sentiments when she opens her mouth to answer Comus’s argument about the necessity of enjoying Nature’s riches. She confesses that she “had not thought to have unlockt my lips / In this unhallow’d air,” until realizing that virtue needed a champion (755-56).
If the Attendant Spirit and the Lady characterize the air and the vapors entering and exiting the body, as putrid and adverse to health, then the picture that emerges of the wild wood at evening is of a darkened, delusive atmosphere inimical to clear perception.
The faculty of sight is practically useless in this setting. The “blind mazes” of wood are inscrutable to the eye, and the night is so dark that the Lady exclaims
O theevish Night Why shouldst thou, but for som fellonious end, In thy dark lantern thus close up the Stars, That nature hung in Heav’n.
(194-97)
Her remark is echoed by the older of her two brothers, whose prayer for starlight points up the thickness of the forest canopy and the pitchy blackness of the night:
Unmuffle ye faintstars, and thou fair Moon That wontst to love the travailers benizon,
Stoop thy pale visage through an amber cloud, And disinherit Chaos, that raigns here
In double night of darknes, and of shades;
(330-4)
Lack of light impels the wanderers to lean more heavily on their sense of hearing for guidance. The Lady expresses this inevitability as she tries to locate those who are responsible for making the sounds of merriment she hears issuing from the wood: “This way the noise was, if mine ear be true, / My best guide now” (169-70; italics added). The Attendant Spirit in the person of Thyrsis also uses his ear to locate the Lady: “Then down the Lawns I ran with headlong hast / Through paths, and turnings oft’n trod by day, / Till guided by mine ear I found the place” (567-9; italics added). Eyes have been rendered useless by darkness.
By depicting the wood that separates the children as stubbornly tangled and wrapped in impenetrable darkness, the masque raises the possibility that sound and hearing will help to unite them. In response to his older sibling’s improbable suggestion that they might see “some gentle taper / Though a rush Candle from the wicker hole / Of som clay habitation” (336-8), the younger brother expresses doubt about gaining
visibility in the wood, hoping, rather, that sound might reach their ears:
Or if our eyes Be barr’d that happiness, might we but hear
The folded flocks pen’d in their watled cotes, Or sound of pastoral reed with oaten stops, Or whistle from the Lodge, or village cock Count the night watches to his feathery Dames, T’would be som solace yet, som little chearing In this close dungeon of innumerous bowes.
(342-8)
All of the opportunities he imagines for aural perception are plausible—from the noises of farm animals to the sounds of the shepherds and villagers. And indeed, it is Thyrsis’s far away “hallow” that finally rescues them from complete darkness, literal and
metaphorical (480).
But even if aural phenomena seem to offer consolation to the children, and a way to find their bearings in the dark woods, the masque shatters these assumptions by illustrating how sound can mislead and even infect the mind. Comus’s opening song and the aural and visual illusions he presents to the Lady demonstrate that sound cannot replace light in its absence; nor can it alleviate entirely the sense of misdirection or
“Chaos, that raigns” at night. Certain sounds are actually distorted by the night air, others suspended and preserved by it. Darkness and thick air present a biding place for sound where it lingers and sometimes transmutes even after its source has been removed.
The synesthetic language Comus uses to describe how the shadiness of the wood conceals his followers’ illicit acts introduces the idea that darkness may serve to trap or retain sound, whereas light readily releases it. When he bids his fellow revelers to begin their sacred rights, he reassures them that “Tis onely day-light that makes Sin / Which these dun shades will ne’re report” (126-7). He continues to conflate speech with illumination when he promises the goddess Cotytto that they will complete all her rites
Ere the blabbing Eastern scout, The nice Morn on th’Indian steep From her cabin’d loop hole peep,
And to the tel-tale Sun discry Our conceal’d Solemnity.
(138-42)
When the Lady arrives at the place where she thought she heard riotous sounds, darkness seems to act as Comus suggests, mysteriously absorbing any trace of the sounds’ origins:
This is the place, as well as I may guess, Whence eev’n now the tumult of loud Mirth Was rife, and perfet in my list’ning ear, Yet nought but single darkness do I find.
(200-203)
But the Lady’s words “eev’n now,” which indicate that the ruckus she heard is still perceptible, present a point of confusion since they are succeeded by the words “Was rife,” which suggest conversely that the sound is no longer distinct. Is she still hearing the sounds that Comus hushed up just before she arrived? Possibly. The phenomenon of sound delay had been discussed by Bacon who knew that sound traveled slower than light and even proposed a way to measure its speed.54 In Sylva Sylvarum, he observes that the
“species of audibles do hang longer in the air than those of visibles.”55 The persistence of sound after it is created may relate to the thickness of the medium and the time of day. He explains, “in the day, when the air is more thin, no doubt, the sound pierceth better; but
54 Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, 416, III, §209. Bacon’s idea for measuring the speed of sound was adapted by Mersenne and others; see Gouk, Music Science and Natural Magic, 162.
55 Century II of the Sylva Sylvarum includes an entire section (experiments 124-137) on “Experiments in consort touching production, conservation, and delation of sounds; and the office of the air therein”; see pp.
393-8. Bacon’s claim about the persistence of audible species in the air may be found on p. 432, III, §274.
when the air is more thick, as in the night, the sound spendeth and spreadeth abroad less”;
“thick air preserveth the sound better from waste.”56 These accounts of the persistent nature of sound, particularly at night, help us to see why the clamor of Comus’s party is still audible to the Lady even when the partiers have vanished and ceased to make noise.
Already inclined to lag and linger in the air, the species of sound is further preserved from dissipation by the insulating material of darkness. That the Lady switches to past tense (“the tumult…/Was rife”) as she narrates her experience, however, suggests that either the sound eventually falters or the Lady loses confidence in what she hears. The behavior of aural stimuli—the fact that they hang around in the air even when their producers no longer remain—imposes a disruption between sound and sight, possibly causing the Lady to doubt her ear, which she previously presumed was her “best guide.”
Milton is not content, however, to admonish us of the disorienting physical properties of sound as delineated by Bacon. He seems to discern even greater danger in certain characteristics of sound that Bacon is happy to describe from a physical
standpoint without discussing their moral or spiritual implications. Throughout his natural philosophy, Bacon is at pains to distinguish his method from a certain fraudulent sort of natural magic that he believes acts on men’s critical faculties like a drug because it rests on opinions and mystical truths rather than the active and rational pursuit of real knowledge.57 Perhaps because of his contempt for this delusive kind of magic, which he views as an aberration from the original conception of magic, Bacon avoids speculation
56 Bacon, Sylva Sylvarum, pp. 399, 418, §143, §218.
57 Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning, III, Ch. 5, p. 367.
about the interaction of sounds with astral or spiritual influences, which, as we have already seen, interested occult philosophers. In Comus, Milton goes beyond Bacon’s contentions that sound is not communicated instantly, that it lingers in the air, and that dark and dense air is effective for retaining sound, in implying that the substance of sound implicit in the air is susceptible to spiritual influence and manipulation—
particularly by magical means. In recognizing the potential for spiritual agents or
meddling magicians to interfere with sound, Milton, who in many other respects accepts Bacon’s acoustics, advances arguably a less naïve model of sound by revealing how even a physical account of aural phenomena like Bacon’s is compatible with the operation of magical and supernatural forces. Bacon simply does not acknowledge that by giving sound a life outside the ear in the mysterious immaterial vehicle of the species, and, by allowing this entity to pass into the body and work on the spirit, he invites the notion that the species—and through it, the human soul—may be altered or corrupted by spiritual means.
Milton is much more willing to entertain the notion that aural phenomena, while explicable through natural laws, are also subject to magic, which, as a science, furnishes useful ways of explaining sound, and as an art, is capable of affecting and diverting sounds to serve the magician’s purposes. That magic is afforded this power in the masque, particularly the power to draw out or exploit certain properties inherent in the environment, is evident from Comus’s ability to channel corrupted sounds into the Lady’s mind. This occurs just as the Lady seems to indicate that the sound, whose producers she wandered in search of, has subsided. At this point the invisible residue of
that commotion “[throngs] into [her] memory” confronting her with “calling shapes, and beckning shadows dire, / And airy tongues, that syllable mens names” (205-207). These phantom voices are not merely reverberations of the sounds the Lady heard earlier; they have been transformed into phantasms that conduct themselves into the Lady’s mind where they call and beckon to her as though of their own agency. How did the sound she originally heard transform from “Midnight shout, and revelry” into the sinister whispers of “airy tongues” (103)?
The seeds of the enchantment may be traced to Comus’s invocation of Cotytto,
“Goddesse of Nocturnal sport” (128), which he plies just before the Lady’s footsteps are perceived nearby. In addressing the deity, Comus stresses that this conjuration always occurs at the darkest point of night:
mysterious Dame That ne’re art call’d, but when the Dragon woom Of Stygian darkness spets her thickest gloom, And makes one blot of all the ayr
(130-3)
Comus’s rather disgusting figure of a Hell monster’s womb spitting out a thick cloud of darkness is not just the macabre expression of a lascivious sorcerer; it displays his continual desire for the protection of darkness and anticipates his request for additional cloud cover. In the next line he begs Cotytto to
Stay thy cloudy Ebon chair,
Wherin thou rid’st with Hecat’, and befriend
Us thy vow’d Priests.
(134-6)
The elder brother’s speculation that the stellar and lunar influence he seeks to light the way back to his sister may “be quite damm’d up / With black usurping mists” seems to be in response to this dark, obscuring fog, which Comus has invited to settle over the wood (335-6). The fact that it blocks the starlight from reaching the children is no accident. As the Lady rightly suspects, the night has eclipsed the stars “for som fellonious end.” That is to say, the fog Comus summons from the Thracian deity and her associate Hecate, goddess of sorcery, is clearly imbued with all the physical hazards of a dark haze—
including the capacity to amplify, prolong, and preserve sounds as Bacon suggests—but also, the threatening enchantments of black magic.
Comus uses other magical means to increase the already bewildering nature of nighttime haze. In his opening speech, which precedes a lively song, he brags with Cavalierish pomp, “We that are of purer fire / Imitate the Starry Quire” (111-2). As Blair Hoxby argues, the rite Comus initiates here illustrates a key function of balletic dance in Stuart masques: the magic conferral of astral influence on the masquers via their figural imitation of stellar movements.58 Comus appears to subscribe to Ficino’s view that through song we imitate and channel astral influence most effectively.59 In addition to
58 “The Wisdom of Their Feet: Meaningful Dance in Milton and the Stuart Masque,” English Literary Renaissance 37 (2007): 88-90.
59 “Song is the most powerful of all imitations because it reflects the intentions and moods of the spirit and stirs up those who hear it. Harmony is purer than matter and more like the sky than medicine, for it is warm, breathing air and, in a way, alive, composed of articulations and joints (articulationibus artubusque) like an animal, and possessed of a feeling and significance to which the sky will respond, as will the singer himself, especially if his nature is Phoebean (Apollo being the god of song).” See De vita triplici in Opera,
attempting with his antic measure to infuse his crew with celestial power, Comus further alters the atmosphere of the wood by seeding it with magical spells or charms. As he hears the Lady approaching, Comus tosses “dazzling Spells into the spungy ayr / Of power to cheat the eye with blear illusion” and cover up the remnants of his crew’s revelry (154-5). I argue that these spells, which Comus casts aloft with a certain “Magick dust,” do more than interfere with the enchanter’s outward appearance and that of the dark forest (165). That they are visually effective is evident from the success of Comus’s shepherd disguise and the Lady’s conviction that the “sable cloud” overhead “[Turns]
forth her silver lining on the night”—quite possibly the result of the magic Comus has performed on the air (222-3). But they also carry aural implications, as magical verses themselves, Agrippa says, are made of “a most pure harmoniacall spirit, warm, breathing, living, bringing with it motion, affection and signification.” Moreover, Comus tells us that his spells have been absorbed into the “spungy air,” the medium through which all the other sounds in the vicinity have moved or will move. Milton’s word choice here is significant. By likening the dense atmosphere of the wood to a sponge, he emphasizes its power to absorb and retain Comus’s spells and the sounds of his revelers. Whether these suspended sounds consist of species, as Bacon would have it, or refined and moving air, as Ficino believed, they are compromised by the spells that are also stuck in the
enchanted fog. Responsible for the moment when the revelers’ tumult ceases to ring
“eev’n now” in the Lady’s ear and beckoning voices begin to flow into her imagination
vol. 1 (Basiliae: Ex Officinia Henricpetrina, 1576) III, xviii (558), paraphrased in Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance, 133.
are the astrologically empowered spells and “black usurping mists” that Comus uses to accentuate the natural acoustics of dark air.
The air, for Comus, is a place of spiritual potential. It is a region full of animate spirit, celestial and daemonic, which the enchanter may constrain and divert for his purposes. The spirituous substance of sound is a crucial vehicle for inviting disembodied spirit into objects, persons, or locales, and similarly, for releasing it from them. Comus is well aware of the utility of sound as an instrument of enchantment and uses it to degrade and deplete his victims’ spirits as well as harvest spirit from the environment. His belief that the air is saturated with spirit that is responsive to sound is evident not only from his tuneful invocation of the stars and the goddesses of the night, but also his curiously tactile descriptions of the silent night air. When he overhears the “raptures” that the Lady sings to Echo he remarks
How sweetly did they float upon the wings Of silence, through the empty-vaulted night At every fall smoothing the Raven doune Of darknes till it smil’d
(246, 248-51)
He says the night is vacuous or “empty-vaulted,” but characterizes its negative qualities in material terms: silence has wings; darkness is downy. This contradiction recalls the paradoxical image in Paradise Lost likening Hell to a furnace whose flames emit “No
light, but rather darkness visible.”60 Though a better term for the oblivion in Milton’s masque might be “darkness palpable,” the underlying meaning is similar. There is no light; nevertheless the darkness is crammed with perceptible activity. Here that active presence is registered by beating wings and raven feathers, which are stilled or coaxed into ordered movements by the caresses of the Lady’s voice. Comus alludes again to the feathered texture of the sky in his argument against virginity when he claims that if Nature’s sons were to refuse her gifts the whole earth would be strangled with her fertility and “the wing’d air dark’t with plumes” (729). On its face, this statement is a simple prediction that the Earth’s bird population would explode, but it also conjures an image of a dark pall of wings in the sky. That Comus professes to fear an atmospheric eclipse is ironic, since he is the chief beneficiary of obscuring shade and darkness.
Moreover, if the Elder Brother imagines correctly, the sorcerer should be accustomed to being encircled by winged creatures (along with other demons) as he commands armies of “Harpyies and Hydra’s, or all the monstrous forms / Twixt Africa, and Inde” (604-5).
By portraying the crowding of the sky with such forms as a calamitous outcome of self-denial, Comus seems to admit—however insincerely—that the benighted existence he leads in the wood enshrouded by tree boughs, magical fog, and the rustle of spiritual wings, is truly a kind of suffocating hell.
Comus displays awareness of his faults most apparently when he hears the Lady sing or speak. The divine quality of her voice strikes him as serving a dramatically
60 In this chapter, I use the revised and augmented 2nd edition, which hereafter is cited in the text by book
60 In this chapter, I use the revised and augmented 2nd edition, which hereafter is cited in the text by book